What is wrong with nature and humanity?
What is wrong with the world? All of us have some sense that things are not as they should be.
This video was filmed during the pandemic. A coronavirus so small that 500 of them could fit within the diameter of a human hair has shaken our lives on scale never before seen in our lifetimes. All have been inconvenienced; most have suffered; some have died. But there are trillion of viruses in this world. Most of them are critical for the existence of life. No virus truly wants to kill its host, it needs him or her to survive. But the morbidity of just one of these viruses have turned our lives into more knots than a pretzel.
However, just as there is this fragility in nature, there is moral fragility in humankind. I remember as child realizing the world was not all it should be. My parents divorced. I saw the anger they had toward each other. Then, I saw the violence in the world. Finally, I saw the discrepancies in me. The good things I wanted to do I did not do. But the things I did not want to do I gave into.
In our previous episodes of Questioning Life, we looked at how God made creation good and humankind good. He placed good humankind us on his good earth to exercise good dominion over plants, animals – and of creation. We were to reflect his goodness just as the moon reflects the light of the Sun.
So, what went wrong? Did God mess up the recipe?
The Bible calls what went wrong, sin and evil. With sin came evil. Yet, sin is not a mere breaking of a rule. In its essence, sin is rebellion against God. When our first parents used their free will to rebel against God sin entered the human race. And with it came evils of all kinds – both human-made and natural.
Yet, the same good God who made all things good had a good plan to restore all things. Knowing we were helpless to save ourselves – being enslaved to sin – he sent his Son to rescue us and the world with us. His Son became cursed to remove the curse of sin and evil.
There is much to be said about this. We will explore these things more deeply on future episodes of Questioning Life. For now, we can say with the psalmist, “When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do (Psalm 11)?” His answer was to look to the Lord in his Holy Temple. And that is what we can do too. We can look to the Answer, the Solution; we can look to Christ.
Prayer:
Lord, you made this world good. We have marred it. We cannot fix it ourselves. Help us trust in your Son Jesus Christ, through whom all things are being restored. In his name we pray. Amen.
Credits:
Idea/Concept: Pastor Mike Birbeck
Videography: Ethan Chabala
Video Editing: Ethan Chabala
Writing: Pastor Mike Birbeck
Produced by Vogt Media
Home Page Sponsors: First Presbyterian Church Wellsboro